For a dismayed H.G. Wells the Great War was "Scientific war. The lifeless monster that kills the souls and bodies of men." One hundred years ago this week Sydney's The World's News ran Wells' essay of that name. Germany's gigantic big guns, and the arms race they were going to cause, were two of his themes.
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"They [Germany's big guns] are strangely like gods, squatting, gaping, death-sending gods, to which men have given their souls. These monsters have cracked the armour of Belgium and France ... Legend has it that still larger guns are being made that can fire across the channel from Calais to England.
"There is no limit to the size of guns except the sanity of their makers. A gun could be made in New York to smash London. Such a gun could be made, loaded and fired if all of America wanted to have it ... Incidentally New York would be shaken to pieces by the concussion and most of the people of the eastern states would be spun about like straws in a whirlwind, but these considerations would probably not restrain a people really obsessed by the the culture of military magnificence.
"And in their making of guns the Germans [have already] carried the answer to "Why not a larger?" to a quite astonishing point. It is manifest that if a nation devotes its full energies to such a research the other nations in the world must either put a stop to that development, or follow suit, or go under."
